Methuselah's Children

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Image:Methuselahs Children.jpgMethuselah's Children is a long 1941 science fiction short story, very early in his writing career, and a longer 1958 novel by Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein used his "Future History" series of stories (The Man Who Sold the Moon, Revolt in 2100, etc.) as a background for this novel about the long-lived Howard Families, star travel, and human freedom. It was originally serialized in a Street & Smith Publications magazine in 1941.

This is the first appearance of Lazarus Long, who is so old that oftentimes when he miscalculates his age he is off by an entire century. Other Lazarus Long books include Time Enough For Love, The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. This book also features an appearance by the mathematical genius Andrew "Slipstick" Libby, previously seen as a teenager in the short story "Misfit".

Heinlein returned to the Lazarus Long character towards the end of his career, making this the first title in a set of five interrelated novels involving time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein called "pantheistic solipsism" or "world-as-myth" — the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere, even fictional worlds such as the Land of Oz are real.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Howard Families (poetically referred to as Methuselah's Children) are the product of a centuries-long eugenics scheme started in 1873 by a millionaire named Ira Howard who found himself (presumably through a rare mutation) dying of old age in his forties. He therefore set up a trust fund to execute a long-term plan to selectively breed humans for longevity (thereby preventing others from suffering his fate). The plan encourages particularly long-lived people to produce children, by providing a large gift to any baby born with four centenarian grandparents. Several centuries later, a stable and peaceful world discovers the Howards, whose average life expectancy is now around 150. Society demands the secrets of their extended life spans, refusing to believe that the Howard Families simply chose their ancestors wisely. This crisis precipitates an exodus into the stars by hijacking the colony starship New Frontiers and try to find a better planet to live on. They discover two habitable planets, but both are inhabited by aliens whose social systems do not mesh well with the Families. When Mary Sperling joins the natives, Lazarus decides it's time to go back to Earth and claim their rights.

Because of time dilation effects, seventy-five years have passed on Earth. To their surprise they find that on earth longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by a belief that there was some specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, they have explored every avenue known to science to duplicate the feat; and have succeeded through surgery and advanced molecular chemistry.

The New Frontiers is the second ship of its class; the novel describes the improvements made over the Vanguard, the vehicle for Heinlein's novella Orphans of the Sky.

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